Well, yes, in a way it was too much to ask. There would be Richard’s pride to contend with, as well as the fact that it was none of my business, as he might trenchantly point out. I would have to be superhumanly tactful, and, at the moment, I could think of no acceptable way of broaching the subject with such a man. Then I thought of Daphne, alone and desperately worried in her big empty house, and felt that I couldn’t refuse at least to try.
Uneasily (though I hope the uneasiness didn’t sound in my voice) I said I would do what I could; and then, at last, we did ring off. But not before I’d heard the faint click of an extension being put down in some other part of the house.
It was just a little disconcerting. Had someone been listening-in to the whole conversation? Edwin, of course, was the ‘someone’ I had in mind; but it occurred to me that even if he had been eavesdropping, it really didn’t matter much. I could think of nothing we had said which could be news to him. For Daphne’s sake, I had been extremely careful not to betray any of my suspicions, and certainly I had given no information as to what was going to happen next. Well, I didn’t know, did I? It was in Edwin’s brain, not mine, that the scenario for the coming nights and days was taking shape.
So, pushing the matter from my mind, I decided to take advantage of Jessica’s kindly suggestion that we should use the telephone whenever we liked. I made a couple more calls: one to my temping organiser, telling her that I was still unsure of when I’d be home; and another to Jason, just to hear how he was getting on.
Just fine, apparently. Everything was OK, except that the milkman hadn’t left any milk this morning, had I cancelled it, or something? We sorted that one out, and then chatted on for a bit, about this and that. Our recent contretemps over the boletus had evidently been quite forgotten, or forgiven, or both, and we had a pleasant, laughing conversation, as of old. I finally rang off feeling a lot better. At least everything was all right at home.
CHAPTER XXVII
I must have spent longer on the phone than I’d imagined, because by the time I got back to the dining-room the meal was over. Even the washing-up was done, the kitchen empty, everything tidied away.
Where was everybody? And above all, where was Edwin? Who was he with? What was he up to?
The house was strangely silent. No stir of movement, no clink of coffee cups, no voices raised in idle chatter. With growing unease, I made a brief survey of the downstairs rooms. Only in the drawing-room was there a light on — a tall standard lamp casting a soft orangey glow into shadows, and highlighting the empty sofa, the empty luxurious chairs, the plump cushions unpressed by any human form.
Upstairs, then. By now I noticed that I was moving cautiously, on tiptoe, an instinctive response to the surrounding silence. The old stairs creaked a little here and there as I trod, but that was all.
Our own room was in darkness, like the rest, and when I switched on the light I was momentarily dazzled by the sudden brilliance. I don’t know what I’d expected to see — it was hardly likely that Edwin would be sitting in total darkness, meditating — though goodness knows he had plenty to meditate on. Nor did it seem likely that he had already gone to bed — it wasn’t much after ten. I was about to retreat once more after a cursory glance round the apparently empty room, when my eye was caught by a kind of hump under the patchwork quilt on the bed. So he had gone to bed then, despite the earliness of the hour? The shock I felt was quite out of proportion to the occasion: why shouldn’t a man go to bed early? Especially when, to my certain knowledge, he had been up and about for a substantial part of last night. Even murderers need their sleep. More than most of us, very likely.
I moved nearer, conscious of an extraordinary reluctance to investigate further; and it was only now, as the first shock subsided, that I realised that whatever this hump was, it couldn’t be Edwin. It was far too small. It extended barely half-way down the bed.
He’d hidden something here, then? Buried something? For a moment, hysteria gripped me, and I almost rushed screaming from the room. Then, with an enormous effort of will, I controlled myself, leaned forward, and very gingerly lifted the quilt a few inches.
The shock, for one second, was even greater than the first one had been.
Barnaby. Eyes closed, quite motionless, and for that one terrible second I thought he was dead.
But no. It was all right. He was breathing, normally, peacefully, the breathing of any sleeping child. His cheeks were rosy with sleep, and at the slight disturbance I’d caused, he stirred a little but did not wake.
Weak with relief, I simply had to sit down. Slumped in the rocking chair, I slowly collected my wits, and realised just how foolish I’d been.
Of course! The most natural thing in the world. The evening for the grown-ups was obviously extending far beyond the bedtime of a four-year-old, and so they’d decided to bed him down temporarily until his parents were ready to take him back to their hotel.
All the same, why had they chosen our bed? Well, why not? He had to be somewhere. And anyway, it wasn’t our bed in any real sense; it was Jessica’s bed, which she’d kindly given up to us for the visit.
Still, she might have told me. I might easily have wakened the child, barging into the room, switching the light on, and maybe — if Edwin had been there — talking quite loudly.
Then I realised that telling me would have been a bit of a tiresome business, as I’d been on the phone throughout the time when the decision about the bedding-down of Barnaby must have been taking place.
Besides, Jessica had very likely consulted Edwin about it — after all it was his room as much as mine — and he’d certainly have said ‘Yes’. Not because Edwin is by nature a Yes-sayer, far from it, but because, as well as being vaguely fond of Barnaby, he was very fond indeed of the child’s unqualified admiration. Very ego-boosting is the admiration of a small child, unclouded as it is by any rational assessment of one’s good or bad qualities. Admiration was something Edwin needed, as a starving man needs food. How he throve on praise and approval! How happy, how kindly he had become during that brief spell of worldwide fame. What a nice person my husband would have been if only he could have been famous all along without having to do anything in particular to earn it.
Calmer now, my idiotic panic having quite subsided, I prised myself out of the rocking chair and tiptoed back to the bed.
Barnaby was still sleeping, deeply, peacefully, and pulling the quilt a little more off his face, I noticed that he was still wearing his blue tee-shirt. Well, naturally, they wouldn’t have brought his pyjamas with them for such an unpredictable visit. As he slept, one firm, brown little arm was cradled protectively round some toy or special treasure; and looking closer I recognised the worn wooden rim of a tennis racket, the tangle of broken strings making little criss-cross shadows on the pillow.
Useless to anyone else, to Barnaby the battered object was an exciting treasure, and something in Edwin must have recognised this. Casually, without thought but with unerring instinct, he had handed it over to the child, and had doubtless revelled in the ensuing squeals of joy and gratitude, especially if Sally had been around to note admiringly how good he was with children — far better than the boy’s own father.
Why was Edwin so good with small children? How was it that he, a liar, a criminal, a would-be murderer, had such an affinity for that most innocent section of the whole human race — the under-fives? Was it in spite of his criminal tendencies, or — it suddenly occurred to me — because of them? Did they recognise in him a fellow-spirit, a dweller still in that primitive Garden of Eden without the knowledge of good and evil?
Gently arranging the quilt to cover the child’s arm but to leave his face free, I tiptoed from the room.
Out on the landing, I had to think again. The silence throughout the old house was unnerving, and even more so now that I knew Barnaby was here. Surely they wouldn’t all have gone out together, to the pub or for a walk, leaving him alone in a strange house? Would they? It was just conceiva
ble that Sally, loving mother though she was, might have countenanced a short absence in the airy confidence that “of course it’ll be all right!”
But not Richard. Awkward though he might be in the handling of his small son, there was no doubt that he was a devoted father, and intensely protective. No way would he have allowed the risk to be taken.
Or did they assume that since I was still in the house, it was all right? But no one had said anything about it to me, or even checked that I knew the child was there.
Or had they — it suddenly occurred to me — left Edwin in charge? And he, finding himself alone and unsupervised, the whole house at his disposal, might have seen it as a heavensent opportunity for …
Well, for what? For the furtherance of some nefarious scheme, I had no doubt. This time, no scenario came into my mind of what he might be planning. The important thing was to find him. He must be somewhere.
Once again, the ancient staircase creaked beneath my cautious tread. Once again I did my rounds of the downstairs rooms, finishing with the drawing-room.
Here, I was brought up short. It was in darkness. Someone, since I had last looked in, had switched off the standard lamp.
Suddenly bold, I stepped inside.
“Who’s there?” I demanded, quite loudly, and switched on the light at the door.
A stirring, a heaving, a commotion behind the sofa made itself evident, and a moment later there was Jessica, more dishevelled than I had ever seen her, rearing up behind the sofa back.
“Oh, it’s you Clare!” she gasped, her voice shaking with relief. “I thought it was a burglar. A murderer. A rapist. I heard those footsteps tiptoeing around the house, Oh, I was so frightened! It was you, wasn’t it? Why didn’t you say?”
“Well, how could I? There didn’t seem to be anyone to say anything to. I looked everywhere. I looked in here, but I didn’t see you.”
“No,” she had the grace to look slightly shamefaced. “I must have been behind the sofa already. I heard the door open but I couldn’t see anything from where I was, and so I thought …”
“That I was a burglar, murderer or rapist,” I finished crisply. “And suppose I had been …”
I stopped. What point was there in accusing her of arrant cowardice in leaving Barnaby to be raped, murdered, etc., while she lurked behind a sofa? It hadn’t happened. No harm had been done. And people don’t choose to be cowardly.
“Well, anyway,” I said, as she clambered back over the sofa and settled herself, panting in one of the chairs, “here I am now. Everything’s all right. I’m surprised you didn’t realise it was me. After all, you knew I was still here.”
“I didn’t, you know. I didn’t know anything of the sort. I thought I was on my own. I thought you’d gone with them.”
With which of them? Where?
Well, all of them. You know. The others. No, not Rhoda, she’d had to go to the Nuclear Waste Dumping Committee. No, they weren’t dumping nuclear waste, though it did sound like that, didn’t it? Silly, really, calling themselves that when actually they were against dumping it, as indeed was Jessica, but she just wasn’t a committee person, if I knew what she meant. Rhoda was a committee person, and since it takes all sorts, especially in a village …
I tried not to sound too impatient.
“Which of them?” I interrupted again. “Where have they gone?”
“Where? Oh, you wouldn’t believe it! They must be out of their tiny minds! Didn’t they tell you? Well, it was like this. We’d finished dinner, you see, and everything seemed a bit flat — you know, with Leo still not being here after all our preparations, and everyone sort of hanging about — waiting for you to finish on the telephone, I suppose, and also for Edwin to come back. He’d vanished — surprise, surprise! — as soon as the washing-up was mentioned. Well that’s men for you, isn’t it …?”
“But where’ve they gone?” I insisted, heading off this familiar detour. “You said they’d gone out somewhere. Richard and Sally, do you mean? Or Edwin too?”
“Yes, well, actually it was Edwin’s idea. He came bursting in — we were in here by then — he came bursting in, looking all — Oh, I can’t think of the right word for it! Kind of lit up, as if he was drunk, but he wasn’t drunk — we didn’t even open the Sauterne, did we, with Leo not being there. Pixillated! I think that’s the word — a kind of unearthly excitement; he was absolutely gabbling about it being a marvellous night, you should just see the stars — that sort of thing. And then, ‘Let’s go for a swim!’ he cried, ‘Come on Sally, how about it? A midnight swim!’ and he began kidding her that the water would be wonderful, still warm from the summer.
“Well, you know how Sally is. She was jumping about like a six-year-old. ‘Oh yes!’ she said, ‘Let’s!’ and they rushed around collecting towels and things. I told them they could take what they liked — anything so long as they left me out of it.
“And off they went. I don’t think Richard was so enthusiastic, he’d been arguing quite a bit, but Sally was mad keen, and so in the end he went too.”
Well, he would, wouldn’t he?
“And you?” I asked, “Didn’t you want …?” but she shrugged her shoulders, and executed a dramatic shudder.
“Me! Swim? at this time of year? Honestly, Clare …! And as to the water in the North Sea being ‘Wonderful’ in October — they’ve got another think coming! But I didn’t interfere. Let them live and learn!”
And then she added, a little defensively: “Besides, somebody had to stay at home because of Barnaby. I didn’t realise that you were still here, I thought you’d gone with the rest of them.
I tried not to appear flurried or anxious as I hurried into my coat, changed my shoes.
“It’s something terrible, isn’t it?” Daphne had said; and, God forgive me, I had assured her that it was not.
CHAPTER XXVIII
By now there was no moon, and I had expected to be stumbling along in total darkness, but I had forgotten that darkness outdoors is never total. Even in the wildest and most out-of-the way stretches of country, there is always something, somewhere, glimmering and beckoning. Always, too, from this or that small town even as far as twenty miles away, there is a spreading paleness before which the blackness of space retreats a little, fails to be total. The very atmosphere itself is impregnated through and through with random accumulations of light.
In England, anyway. I recalled Edwin’s description of the total blackness of the desert sky, and its dazzle of stars, and I wondered if all this would actually have been true, if only it hadn’t been all lies …
By the time I had crossed the road and could feel the dry marram grass coarse and prickly around my legs, my eyes had become totally adapted to the nightscape, and I could see the dark curve of the sandhills quite sharply silhouetted against the paler sky, and I began to hear the faint, uneasy murmur of the outgoing tide.
Yes, the tide was well on its way out. From the crest of the dune I looked down on what seemed an immense expanse of faintly gleaming sand, stretching away and away to the thin white scallops of foam which marked the edge of the sea.
And here, to my dark-adapted eyes, lights seemed to be switched on everywhere, dancing, streaking, flickering towards me across the water. Lights from that anonymous low building on the east headland; lights—a whole line of mini-lights from a slow, flattened sort of vessel creeping lizard-like along the horizon: a bright, intermittent floodlight, coming and going, from some far-off maritime signal station; and, nearer in, several small, lantern-like flickers close around our wreck — presumably warning lights to guide passing craft from this dark obstacle.
The wreck. Until this moment, I had been in doubt as to which way to turn along the beach, but now I was somehow no longer in doubt. Sally would have chosen, I felt sure, to return to the scene of the afternoon’s adventure; would she, even, have persuaded her escorts to drag one of the boats once again down to the water, in order to re-experience under the stars this afternoon’s exc
itements?
Would Richard have allowed it? Would the escapade fit in with Edwin’s plans, whatever they were?
For Edwin was up to something, that was certain. But what? If he meant harm to Richard, then why invite Sally to come for a midnight swim? Looking back, I can’t think why the answer didn’t spring to my mind immediately, so obvious was it. I can only say that it didn’t. I think, maybe, my mind was being stretched beyond its normal limits by the enormity of my fears and also, in some way, by the hugeness of the night sky, the unimaginable distances that curved above me, pretending to be known and familiar. For was not dear old Cassiopeia almost directly above me? The Great Bear, the Little Bear, and Perseus, all in their proper places, known since childhood; and Orion, too, well up in the southern sky after his long summer absence.
All there, long loved and long known, and yet in reality totally unknown, infinitely alien, beyond the reach of human imagination.
Something like that. In a kind of dream, detached somehow, I was aware of being in a hurry, of my feet sinking into the loose sand as I tried to run; and of my eyes peering intently into the swinging darkness, here and gone, as the distant lights moved with me, step for step, across the moving water.
Dangerous Thoughts Page 18